serene peak
I think the common sentiment among the community is that the Oiler is the number 1 item in the game. There's a handful of threads suggesting either to reduce the number of oilers in the game, provide some way to make damage permanent, or to just remove oilers from the game entirely. I want to make a controversial argument that oilers actually aren't the boogeymen we think they are (I personally think the firework takes that title).
First, let's consider exactly what an oiler does: It restores one protection gear, very simple. I think to most magicians this equates to removing all the progress of the chase that resulted in that gear being removed. However, I think this is a fallacy. An oiler can remove the damage you sustained, but it can't:
- Give back a key that was stolen
- Remove a card that was placed on you
- Give back the time you wasted in a cage (or the charge you spent getting out)
- Get you back to a higher floor (After being chucked down)
These are all things that fireworks can effectively do on top of a sizeable stun, when used in the optimal situation (Saving a bunny from a magician's grab). In return for all of the benefits above, the firework has the following downsides:
- It requires a second bunny's teamwork (to save the first one)
- It can miss/be dodged
- You can continue to chase down the bunny that stunned you
It also has the added utility of destroying impostors and stunning ticket. I think in practice, most of the time I would rather have a firework than an oiler.
But that's only half of the discussion. I think there's a specific mindset in the community that is the reason Oilers are so hated, which is carried over from the asym genre as a whole:
I can't win against all these bunnies at once. I have to kill some so I have enough breathing room to handle the rest
I do not mean to suggest that this is a false mindset; it's probably true with the current 1v5 design, but I do think it is an unhealthy design philosophy, and it will eventually spawn a tunneling meta, and once the common strategy focuses on removing one player from the game, it's very hard for the metagame to become about anything else.
To me, the best design of this game will focus on overall stalling out the bunnies by time limit, and the protection cogs don't serve as a primary win condition for the Magician but rather a safeguard against incredibly risky plays, to stop a bunny team from just charging mindlessly at each objective with no regard for their own safety. If we look at the design from that perspective, it becomes clear that Oilers are specifically designed to encourage this approach, since its best use is to support bunnies who are close to death and prevent tunneling, but should not be so numerous that it allows an entire team to mindlessly charge (keyword should).
That's why, at the end of the day, I think Oilers are a totally fine design in the game; they are strong but do not break the fundamental idea of the game's back-and-forth gameplay, and they aren't even the most problematic item in my opinion. I hope that this helps you keep perspective when you've gone 15 chases without a kill, and I hope I'm right that the game will continue to move in a direction that prevents the trap of relying on early kills to even the playing field.
bold bone